Cash or card: what cash really costs a merchant

The short answer

Per payment, cash is the cheapest means of payment in German retail — 43 cents against 60 cents for girocard. Relative to turnover the picture reverses: there cash costs 2.3 per cent and girocard 0.8 per cent, credit cards 2.4 per cent (Bundesbank study “Kosten von Zahlungsmitteln im Einzelhandel”, as at December 2025). Both figures are correct. The difference does not arise at the till, but after closing time.

Two metrics, two winners — and why that is not a contradiction

For this study the Bundesbank timed around 13,000 payment transactions at 15 points of sale and surveyed 268 retail companies. The result is the only reliable full-cost calculation that exists for the German market — fees, devices, insurance and time in one table:

Cost component per payment	Cash	girocard	Visa/Mastercard Debit	Credit cards
General device costs	€0.07	€0.07	€0.07	€0.07
Payment-method-specific device costs	€0.02	€0.06	€0.03	€0.10
Transaction fees (for cash: cash-in-transit and handling)	€0.08	€0.18	€0.28	€0.48
Insurance and loss	€0.01	€0.00	€0.00	€0.00
Time	€0.26	€0.30	€0.31	€0.35
Total per payment	€0.43	€0.60	€0.69	€1.00
Total as a percentage of turnover	2.3 %	0.8 %	2.1 %	2.4 %

Two things stand between the lines here. First: the gap between cash and girocard is 17 cents per payment — considerably less than the usual fee debate suggests. Second: with cash, 26 of the 43 cents are time; with cards, fees are the largest block. That cash nevertheless looks so poor in the turnover comparison is down to the ticket: the median amount of a cash payment is 25.71 euros, girocard 41.67 euros and credit cards 44.44 euros. Fixed costs spread over a small ticket produce a large percentage. That is exactly the mechanism I also describe in the eight cost components of a terminal contract — it applies to cash in just the same way.

The cost of cash appears on no invoice

At the till, cash is not the brake it is often made out to be. The Bundesbank measured it: 18.7 seconds for a cash payment, 15.2 seconds for a contactless card payment without authentication, 23.3 seconds with PIN or signature, 25.7 seconds for an inserted card and 14.0 seconds for a smartphone or smartwatch. Cash therefore sits mid-field and beats the classic card payment with PIN.

The cost block arises elsewhere. Across all means of payment, time at the till accounts for only around 30 per cent of time costs — the remaining 70 per cent is upstream and downstream administration. With cash that means: ordering and counting change, cashing up, the cash report, hunting differences, packing safebags, driving to the bank. That work shows up in no statement, because it is done on the side by the same people who also sell. It is paid for all the same.

What the bank charges for cash

The second invisible item is in your own bank's schedule of prices and services, under counter transactions. Two examples, both re-read in the original today:

Service	Berliner Sparkasse, FirmenKonto (as at 15 July 2026)	Sparkasse Aachen (August 2026 version)
Deposit at the cash machine	€2.00 per transaction	—
Deposit at the staffed counter	€4.00 per transaction, five free items a month	—
Coin safebag	€10.00 per transaction	€7.50 per coin bag plus a booking item, free up to around 50 coins
Change	—	€0.75 per coin roll (bulk €0.50)

That quickly adds up. Model calculation with freely chosen assumptions: a business pays in at the cash machine on 25 days a month and collects a coin safebag weekly. That is 25 × €2.00 = 50 euros a month and 52 × €10.00 = 520 euros a year — together around 1,120 euros a year, before a single minute of counting time is costed. Anyone paying in at the counter instead is at 20 × €4.00 = 80 euros a month after the five free items.

Cash gets more expensive the less it is used

That is the finding that appears in no advertising — neither for terminals nor for cash. Compared with the predecessor study of 2019, costs per transaction have risen by around 80 per cent for both cash and girocard. For cards that is mainly because many small merchants have come on board and pay poorer terms. For cash the Bundesbank gives a different reason: the transaction share is falling, fixed costs spread over fewer payments, and the cash infrastructure is thinning out.

The direction has been measured: in 2025, for the first time, more purchases were paid cashlessly than in cash, with cash at 45 per cent of payments and 23 per cent of turnover (Bundesbank, Zahlungsverhalten in Deutschland 2025, 17 June 2026). For the calculation that means: cashing up does not take half as long just because there is half as much cash in the drawer.

Company size and sector beat the means of payment

This is where it gets uncomfortably honest for small businesses:

Company size	Cash per payment	girocard per payment	Cash as % of turnover	girocard as % of turnover
1 to 9 employees	€0.60	€1.33	3.0 %	3.8 %
10 to 49 employees	€0.56	€0.64	2.5 %	1.8 %
50 and more employees	€0.33	€0.29	1.8 %	0.3 %

At the smallest business, girocard is more expensive than cash — on both metrics. That is the figure that never comes up in a sales pitch, and it is no argument against the terminal: the span between 3.8 and 0.3 per cent arises within one and the same means of payment, so it comes from terms, volume and processes. The lever is in the contract, not in the payment type. The sector effect is just as clear: in hospitality cash costs 3.6 per cent and girocard 3.1 per cent of turnover, in retail in the narrower sense 1.9 and 0.5 per cent respectively. The cause is again the ticket — on average around 12 euros in cash in hospitality against 21 euros in retail.

What that means for individual ticket sizes is shown by transferring the average values onto fixed amounts (model calculation, not a measurement of my own):

Ticket size	Cash (€0.43)	girocard (€0.60)	International debit (€0.69)	Credit card (€1.00)
€5	8.6 %	12.0 %	13.8 %	20.0 %
€12	3.6 %	5.0 %	5.8 %	8.3 %
€25	1.7 %	2.4 %	2.8 %	4.0 %
€45	1.0 %	1.3 %	1.5 %	2.2 %
€90	0.5 %	0.7 %	0.8 %	1.1 %

Counterfeit money, till differences and the duties only cash carries

The counterfeit risk is statistically small and annoying in the individual case: in the first half of 2026 the Bundesbank identified around 30,000 counterfeit banknotes with a nominal value of 1.75 million euros, 4.3 per cent fewer than in the previous half-year. The 50-euro note leads with 14,222 pieces or 47 per cent, and the number of counterfeit 100-euro notes rose by 61 per cent to 5,043. On top of that came around 64,900 counterfeit coins, 91 per cent of them 2-euro pieces (Bundesbank, 7 August 2026). Arithmetically that is seven counterfeit notes per 10,000 inhabitants per year. What matters is the legal consequence, not the probability: counterfeit money is not reimbursed. Whoever accepts it bears the loss themselves and hands the note in to the police.

On top of that comes a duty attached exclusively to cash: under section 146(1) sentence 2 of the Abgabenordnung (German fiscal code), cash receipts and cash payments must be recorded daily. Card turnover supplies its own evidence along with the payment service provider's statement; the cash drawer has to be evidenced by someone every day. This is not legal advice for your individual case, but it is the reason why administrative time is so high with cash.

What I would advise a merchant

1. Measure counting time, do not estimate it. Two weeks with a stopwatch on cashing up, reconciliation, ordering change and the trip to the bank — and value it at your own hourly rate, not at the minimum wage.
2. Search your bank statement for cash items. Deposits, safebags, coin rolls, booking items: work out the annual total. Almost nobody negotiating a merchant discount rate knows that figure.
3. Read your own bank's schedule of prices and services, the counter-transactions section, including the free items. At three deposits a week instead of five, the total changes immediately.
4. Pull the average ticket per means of payment out of your till system. Only after that does a debate about percentages make sense; before it, it is folklore.
5. Check the terminal contract with the per-transaction fee and the merchant discount rate separated — on small tickets the cent amount decides, on large ones the percentage.
6. Streamline cash processes instead of abolishing cash. One deposit instead of three, a smaller change float, a fixed reconciliation time: that cuts exactly the block that makes up 60 per cent of the cost of cash.
7. Hold your own figure against the averages. The Bundesbank measures the market, not your shop. If your sum deviates markedly, that is where the real information lies.